Mosaic

mo-za'ik, a surface decorated by the fitting together of small bits of marble, gems, colored glass, or other substances, so as to form patterns. Mosaic is a Greek word meaning a small stone. The mosaics of the ancients rivaled paintings in refinement and delicacy. The earliest known specimens are small patterns appearing on jewelry, ivory fans, and similar articles. The Louvre and the British Museum possess some very fine mosaics from Nineveh and Egypt. Patterns of the lotus and the papyrus plant are inlaid in ivory with small bits of glass, lapis lazuli, and other gems. One exquisite bit of Egyptian work now in the British Museum is about three-eighths of an inch square. It was evidently a part of a ring. It is ornamented with the sacred hawk. Every feather on the bird's wing is produced in varying colors and tints by a number of stones so small that the use of a magnifying glass is required to tell them apart.

The Greeks and Romans were famous for mosaic pavements. The bits of marble were ordinarily about a quarter of an inch in diameter. The walls of many buildings in Pompeii were faced with thin sheets and bits of marble, having the effect of paintings. Not infrequently the faces of statues were executed in mosaic. The Romans carried their mosaic work into England, in fact, into all parts of the Roman Empire. Much of the best work was done by Greek slaves in Roman employ. Mosaic work was used in the adornment of the early Christian churches. The artist from whom Michelangelo learned to paint was a master of mosaic, or marquetry, as it is sometimes called. An artist of that day boasted that he was able to produce 15,000 varieties of tints in mosaic work. A portrait of Pope Paul V contained 1,700,000 bits of glass, the largest no larger than a millet seed.

It was the boast of the Italian masters of mosaic that they could imitate the finest paintings. To heighten the effects of their work they used gold and silver foil as a basis on which to build. They were able to imitate the transparency of the sky and water, to make a difference between the beard and hair of man, the fur and feathers of animals. They were able to form surfaces that had all the appearance of silk or woolen stuffs, and that, too, in any shade or color. The expression of faces, attitudes, spirited action, the charms of coloring; in short, everything possible to the artist in oils, seems to have been within the reach of the master of mosaic work. If the reader wonders how the workers in mosaic attained such power, it should be remembered that they were people of natural artistic ability, that they were intensely religious, and that they devoted themselves to their art from the earliest childhood. The time that young people nowadays spend in attending school they spent in working with their masters.

See Painting